I thought Nick Clegg (40) was a sensible, forward-looking young man who would break the tired and musty mould of British politics. But within days of his elevation to the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, Clegg has shown himself to be as daft as a brush, thereby continuing in the great English Liberal Tradition.

Clegg has, the Telegraph reports, appointed former Roxy Music keyboardist, ambient doodler and all-round pain-in-the-arse Brian Eno (57) as his advisor on youth affairs.

I have no doubt that the Dave Hill lookalike knows more about popular music than his new boss. Clegg, when asked for his opinion on the Pogues/Kirsty MacColl Fairytale of New York furore, replied “Er, I don’t know the song.” He also claimed that his fave album is “Changes” by David Bowie. No such recording exists.

Yo, Clegg - respect, innit!

Hat tip: Dave Hill

There are to my knowledge two e-petitions on the prime minister’s website protesting the reported cuts in funding for physics and astronomy research in the UK. See here for my take on how the decision will impact on my former colleagues in solar-terrestrial physics.

The first petition, which is coordinated by the UK’s astronomy community, goes on about “…relegating the UK to second tier…”, and the need for Britain to be a “world leader” in science.

The second petition, which I have signed, is more direct, and I reproduce its text in full:

“The creation of the STFC from two previous funding bodies, PPARC and CCLRC, was intended to streamline the disbursement of government funds to areas of research in advanced physics. Assurances were given that budgets would be maintained. Whether by error or intent, the result in December 2007 is a dramatic shortfall in funds of about £80 million, seriously undermining scientific research in the UK. You promised this would not happen, and we look to you to correct the situation.”

If you care about the state of scientific research in the UK, I urge you to sign the second petition.

Hat tip: Russ Swan @ Laboratorytalk

Israeli scientists yesterday said they had created the world’s smallest Hebrew Bible, fitting the book on to a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead.Scientists at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, were able to pack the 308,428 words of what Christians refer to as the Old Testament on to a 0.5mm square of silicon by etching its surface with particle beams.”The Guinness Book of World Records has a Bible 50 times bigger,” said Ohad Zohar, who directed the project. He said he now wanted to take pictures of the nano-Bible and blow it up to a seven-by-seven metre poster, which will make it “possible to read the entire bible with the naked eye”.The tiny Bible was developed as part of an educational drive to increase interest in nanoscience among teenagers.

So it’s not just the Mormons or the Mussies. You want to increase interest in nanoscience among teenagers? Fuck the scriptures — what about this? Blow these up you fuckers!

Too good a quality not to post this version as well

Matthias Küntzel on the Mullah dictatorship

The latest American intelligence estimate on Iran has provoked an emotional response in Europe reminiscent of the euphoria inspired by Chamberlain’s words on Sept. 30, 1938, as he appeared before the throng in front of 10 Downing Street and announced that he had achieved “peace in our time.” Even if many commentators warn not to reduce the pressure on Tehran, the dominant sentiment is a feeling of relief: a sentiment to which the German weekly Die Zeit, for example, gave expression with the headline “Phew! There’ll Be No World War Then!” The focus of the coverage in the media is not on the bitter realization that until 2003 the Iranian military apparatus was explicitly pursuing the development of an atomic weapon, but rather on the “good news” in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): namely that this military program “was halted primarily in response to international pressure,” which is supposed to prove that “Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.” If Iran gave in to international pressure in 2003, the implicit reasoning of the report runs, then it will certainly do so as well in the future. Thus, summarizing the implications of the NIE report, the author of the article in Die Zeit can conclude that “the Iranian regime does not so much conduct its foreign policy according to ideological criteria, but rather according to a lucid cost-benefit analysis.”

In such reflections, wishful-thinking has anesthetized rational thought. The last five years of Iranian diplomacy have demonstrated beyond doubt that the Mullah dictatorship does not work like other states. Tehran has ignored both the “carrots” of economic incentives and the “sticks” of international isolation and has pursued a weapons-related nuclear program at all cost. The intelligence report does not even tangentially touch upon this experience. Instead, it tries to hide the rubble of the failed diplomatic initiatives behind a pleasing new image of Iran: Tehran, the report affirms, “is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.” The intelligence agencies adduce only a single proof of this supposed new attitude: in fall 2003, Tehran is alleged to have halted its nuclear weapons program “in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.” But precisely this assertion — the core finding of the report, from which all its other conclusions follow — is obviously unfounded.

All here.

Suggestions welcome.

Here’s mine. Heston fucking Blumenthal.

Sombrero aloft to the Poot.

One thing leads to another. An item on Five Live news about the Fairytale of New York leads to the BBC1 singles chart and the discovery that Eva Cassidy and Katie Melua (passim here) currently have the best-selling UK single, a disgusting, saccharine puddle of mawk-porn, which will be in use by torturers in sensory-deprivation cells before the second week of January–count on it. While Cassidy is, at least, able to sing, Melua’s voice has the quality of that ambulance or police car siren which goes off two feet behind you in the street without any warning.

‘Oh it’s for charity.’ And? Here’s an idea no one’s ever come up with before today–find your local Red Cross office and hand them a fiver. Cut out the middleman and prevent the senseless waste of polycarbonate, aluminium, shiny CD insert paper and ink.

Here is a version of the same song–which genuinely celebrates life–by a man who was about to die.

Report:

“It is unacceptable that the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, authorised Turkey to bomb our villages”

Nechirvan Barzani PM, Kurdish Regional Government

The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has said almost 2,000 people in northern Iraq have fled their homes in recent days as a result of the Turkish operations.

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest” Albert Einstein is supposed to have said.

The Turkish Islamist government and the military impose their arbitrary will - with the guidance and collusion of Yank fuckwits. Back to normal people. Back to the usual.

Islamist-lite nazis — fucking Turkish thugs and bastardised political currents — secular - my fucking arse.

Turkish university students march with a giant national flag in Istanbul, Turkey, during a protest against the separatist Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

Hitch on religiously inclined windbags, nutjobs, freaks of nature, theocratic dopes — the sort who gives congratulations to Canada for “preserving its National Igloo.”

“Welcome to the our coverage of the 2007 qualifying round of the UK’s contribution to mental gymnastics. We have already seen Simon Jenkins on the mat, dancing through a series of mental hoops and avoiding several hard facts on the ground to finish with a startling concluding somersault to achieve a splendid thesis that the Taliban are winning. What did you think Sue?”

“Thanks John, a terrific performance, really capturing the negativity of the audience. His ability to just handspring over those uncomfortable barriers to his narrative were spectacular. I think we’ll be seeing even bigger jumps from him in future years.”

“Sorry Sue, I have to interrupt. Madeleine Bunting has taken the floor to wild applause from some sections of the crowd, although some of the crowd on the left are already grauning.”

“Yes, John. She has come under increasing criticism from a section of that crowd. It really isn’t decent behaviour to attack her routine even before she has limbered up.”

“Well, she’s off. I have to say that standing jump from Christmas to the term medieval being used as a pejorative term against Islam was spectacular, especially given the presence of the teddy bear and the rape victim.”

“That was close, I have to ask, how can she top this?”

“A quite spectacular use of the crusades against Islam there, totally avoiding the history of militarism in the spread of Islam - choosing instead to highlight its ‘capacity to exert such a powerful hold over its growing number of followers’. This is flawless stuff. That turn on the mat there, did you see it?”

“Yes Sue, very tricky. Bunting has managed to criticize religion, running the risk of tripping on a Dawkins, but at the last minute has managed a triple-forward somersault and half-twist to land on the thesis that Western pluralistic democratic societies are analogous to medieval societies. Modern day concerns about rightwing Islamist movements, or even jihadist movements with records of anti-semitism, are now equivalent to medieval anti-semitism. Very clever how she managed to combine Islam and Islamism into the one term, as well. Superb.”

“Yes, despite the booing from some areas, it seems that Bunting has managed to convince this crowd that the term medieval applies more to Western civilization with its concerns about human rights and equality, than it does to the Sudanese government, sharia law in Saudi Arabia, or zealots who throw acid at female teachers. If there’s one thing to take away from this performance, it that the crowd really loves to hate itself. Next up, it’s the delightful Matthew Parris. Let’s see if he can make the squad.”

It’s an interwebnet’s sort of thing.

The article in the Observer about Cameron’s overtures to the Lib-Dummies is wrapped around an animated advertisement for the ‘NESPRESSO movie with GEORGE CLOONEY’, which seems to fit the context perfectly.

The party also known as the ‘Tories without their kicking boots on’, is being courted by the leader of the Eternal Enemy™ in his latest attempt at political window-dressing.

Cameron today attempts to reach out to both Clegg and Huhne by offering to co-operate on the key areas of devolving power and the environment.

Devolving the environment? That will be a neat trick. Just as a predecessor declared there is no such thing as society and set about making the assertion reality, the latest Tory strategy–which shies away from taxation as a means of encouraging behavioural change, as this would have a direct impact on their constituency–professes a vague reliance on individual responsibility. Presumably, the more people are unemployed, the less opportunity they have to produce greenhouse gases.

Tommy Sheridan, the man who destroyed the SSP, has been arrested in Edinburgh and is being questioned by police in connection with perjury allegations.

Nine officers from Lothian and Borders police have detained the politician’s wife Gail at the house in the Cardonald area of Glasgow while they carry out a search of the property, it was confirmed by his lawyer.

…..

The 43-year-old was approached by police as he left talk107 radio station in Edinburgh, where he presents a show.

Victor Serge wrote:

All those who approached him know that he was disinterested and conceived of his whole existence only as part of a great historic task, which was not his alone, but that of the movement of the socialist masses conscious of the perils and possibilities of our period.

Not Tommy …

Via BBC Scotland News

Update: Sheridan has now been charged.

The labour advocacy group Mafiwasta describes itself as a bunch of liberal do-gooders sticking [our] noses into other people’s business. That notwithstanding, the group is campaigning for the rights of expatriate workers in the United Arab Emirates, where trade unions are illegal and security forces round up and imprison protesters. Some right wing commentators, impressed by  the obscene wealth enjoyed by a minority at the expense of the workers on whose backs the economic ‘miracle’ is built, commend this approach to industrial relations as exemplifying ‘reconciliation rather than confrontation’, and hold up the UAE as the model for future development in the region. The Mafiwasta/Human Rights for Change Complaint to the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association, detailing the extent of human rights abuses in the UAE can be found here:

Exploitation of these workers, ranging from non-payment of wages to physical abuse, is not simply commonplace or widespread; as this document will show, it is systematic. The UAE’s labour laws are wholly biased in employers’ favour, and the mechanisms used to enforce the laws are completely ineffective. The government agency in charge, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, has neither the ability nor the willingness to execute its brief. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the government as a whole, far from acting to protect workers, is an active participant in the abuse, profiting directly from a system which keeps a large migrant workforce in conditions of bondage.

This system of exploitation is underpinned by the denial of the most basic of human rights - the right to freely associate and to bargain collectively. Described as being “among the founding principles of the ILO”, the UAE has not signed core ILO Conventions No. 87 and 98 on Freedom of Association. According to the ILO, Conventions No. 87 and 98 form part of the most fundamental international labour law requirements.

Thanks: Barbara Meinhoff and Will in the comments.

While at the gym last night, I had to spend an additional 20 minutes on the Nordic ski machine in order watch the whole of this riveting documentary about the treatment of Maxine Carr, and the appalling treatment of women wrongly identified as Maxine Carr by various lumpen numpties.

Don’t expect it to increase your faith in humanity.

The Yorkshire Post carry a story on the programme:

Angry mobs have forced the innocent victims to flee from their neighbourhoods despite many having no resemblance to the ex-teaching assistant and being able to prove who they are.

Marianne and two others have now spoken of their traumatic experiences for a hard-hitting television documentary, Being Maxine Carr, being broadcast on Channel 4, on Friday.

Her protests fell on deaf ears and amid a modern-day witch hunt of constant vandal attacks on her home and verbal abuse, she was forced to move away for her safety.

Sunni, Shia, Scottish, English, whatever.

More details here.

It seems a long time since I have felt able to say that the Guardian is the home of some outstanding writing, but this is certainly the case today.

First, there is a moving account by the novelist Khaled Hosseini of his return to Afghanistan. Amid his shock at the devastation of war, the legacy of the unimaginable brutality of the Taliban, the continuing desperate poverty, and the disillusion with the pace of reconstruction, is a feeling of hope.

But here is the most amazing thing of all: amid the despair, sickness and destitution, I saw beauty and kindness that brought me to my knees. And I saw what I had come to Afghanistan to see: signs of rebirth and hope, signs of a people allowing themselves to dream again. I saw men planting grapevines and trees on the hill that leads to Bagh-e-bala, King Abdur Rahman Khan’s old palace, which overlooks the city. I chatted with a young shepherd playing the flute on that hill, the bells on his sheep jingling as they fed on grass. He thought his life was much better since the Taliban had been largely ousted - he could play his flute again. Children flew kites from rooftops and young men in pirhan-tumban played volleyball at the Shar- e-nau Park. People smiled and little schoolgirls sang songs as they skipped to school, holding hands. I saw people painting old homes, building new ones, digging gutters, going to the movies and playing Bollywood soundtrack songs and rubab music at street corners.

The article is a robust reply to the negativism of those like Simon Jenkins. However, it is also a call to speed up development and, in the words of a policeman he talked to, “to find ways to put the aid money where it was most needed, in the pockets of average people“. Read it all.

The second is a long report from inside Burma. It is a recounts a nation in the grip of fear, of ever present violence and brutality, of suppression by a remote military elite. But still there are voices of hope.

Thet Pyin:

“There are divisions in the army. The core of the dictatorship is small, it is at odds with the military in its larger role. This government will fall.”

Ludu Daw Ahmar:

“People are very much afraid of the government but this can’t go on forever. There will be a day when the people break this”

A senior cleric in Mandalay:

“But we know it will not change tomorrow. It might take five years, it might take 10, but it will be go. It has no solutions.”

A political activist in hiding:

“Nobody won in September because it’s not finished”

If there is one thing that gives hope, it is that the human capacity for horror, brutality, genocide and sadism is always confronted by a greater power, the capacity for resistance. That longing for freedom, for an assertion of all that is best in humanity, is indestructible. It wins in the end. It is where we, with our privileged lives, should stand, not with the cynics and the ‘realists’ who would abandon hope and thereby betray the oppressed.

Sausage as utensil. Leave it on the step.

Reporters Without Borders today voiced shock and dismay at the murder of Miguel Ángel Amaya Pérez, a young presenter on Sabana radio, who was found shot dead in Santa Elena, in the Petén department in the north of the country.

In Chad, Nadjikimo Benoudjita, managing editor of the privately-owned weekly Notre Temps, was arrested at dawn and is now being held at Intelligence Headquarters.

Reporters Without Borders today condemned pressure exerted on jailed independent Tunisian journalist Slim Boukhdir, who yesterday began a new hunger strike.

One in six journalists jailed worldwide are being held without any publicly disclosed charge, many for months or years at a time and some in secret locations, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in a new analysis.

It’s called context.

The People of Canada Can Fuck Off.

Harry’s brilliant. The comments are hilarious, too.

At least that’s how my addled brain* initially interpreted the following, as seen on the front page of the BBC news website…

For those of you unfamiliar with British politics (or, indeed, those of you familiar with British politics), Vince Cable is acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, and the party’s main economic spokesman.

* I was last night subject to a passionate rendition of a pome by Aleister Crowley. It may take me some time to recover.

Here’s a another counterproductive contribution to a pluralistic society by another numptie - a lawyer. He’s upset by Inter Milan’s new strip, which includes a red cross on a white background.

Who is more guilty of offending Muslim sensibilities?

a. Inter Milan

b. The media for reporting this case

c. The Muslim Lawyer for helping create an impression that Islam is an intolerant faith looking for the next opportunity to be offended, which then can be used by bigots to attack the Muslim community

d. This blog for blogging the story

Muslims in England who support the national team, may be surprised to find they are responsible for displaying “Western racist superiority over Islam” by waving the national flag.

Says it all really

Fuck Christmas Carols. Fuck Secret Santaand fuck his bran tub. Fuck Christmas doos from work and their fucking inedible slop at £50 a fucking head. Fuck patronising and meaningless Christmas messages from the boss thanking you for another great year at work when your mortal soul is at breaking point with the spirit crushing banality of your toil. Fuck The Metrocentre.Fuck putting up the Christmas decorations at home and at work. Fuck bewas with legs like gas bottles tarting themselves up as some kind of Miss Santa vixen. Fuck the office lush pissed out of his/her head and making a cunt of themselves. Fuck me for allowing myself to be roped into Christmas drinks after work. Fuck rip-off Christmas taxi fares. Fuck Clayton St., which just looks so fucking depressing at Christmas time. But not as depressing as the fucking Gate. Fuck The Gate. Fuck Eldon Square. Fuck Slade. Fuck John Lennon and his climate controlled wardrobe for his fucking fur coats singing Merry fucking Christmas, War Is fucking Over- Imagine hypocrisy. Fuck packed, hot and unhappy bars all over NE1. Fuck The Queen.

Fuck creeping Jesus types harping on about the real fucking meaning of Christmas. Fuck people saying they got nowt for Christmas when they were bairns. Don’t be so fucking jealous and take your beef to your fucking parents who probably drank all their wages and fucked you off because they never wanted you to be born anyway you self pitying wortless cunt. Fuck worrying about homeless people for one day of the fucking year and then fucking them off for the rest of the year. Fuck the inevitable heart-breaking tragedies that always occur at this time of year. Fuck smug cunts telling people they did all of their Christmas shopping online this year. Fuck Wizard. Fuck that “wish I was fucking well at home for Christmas” shite when we’re all climbing the fucking walls by Boxing Day. Fuck glow in the dark reindeer horns worn by inadequate women screeching their way from one hell hole bar to another. Fuck the whole enforced jolliness of it.

Fuck A&E rammed to the rafters with glassings, stabbings and other manner of extreme, drunken violence. Fuck feeling a bit funny, maybe a bit like some kind of fucking weirdo for fucking loathing Christmas. Fuck The Pope. Fuck the tedious tale in the Daily Mail about some school / council / government building etc banning Christmas decorations. Fuck gut-wrenchingly pointless Christmas cards. Fuck Christmas wrapping paper. Fuck Gift Vouchers. Fuck the whole charity push. Fuck the media telling the slack-jawed saps there is going to be a shortage of brussel sprouts and thousands converging on super-markets like a swarm of trackie-bottom wearing locusts. Fucking losers. Fuck talking about the mythical perfect Christmas back in never-never land yesteryear shite. Fuck Christmas Trees. Fuck the oily smile and the phoney handshake from the cunts you work with who have been piling knives into each other’s backs all year round. Fuck phoney German Christmas markets selling tat and sausages. Fuck the sausages as well.

Fuck stories about daft cunts getting themselves into a boatload of debt - for “the children”. Like “the children” would rather have some low quality consumer tat but get evicted by March and have a mother with a nervous breakdown. Daft cunts. Fuck Nigella Lawson telling gimps how to make a Christmas cake. And how to use goose fat. Have you sen the size of her arse? Her old man was a fucking cunt. Fuck him as well. Fuck organised fun. Fuck the nonsense of “its better to give than receive”. Is it fuck! Unless they are talking about anal sex. Fuck that cunt doing his hilarious David Brent dance in the office after a lunchtime sesh. Fuck not having the bottle to twat the cunt when he’s making those Gervais grunts when he’s spinning his arms around. Fuck getting sick of the whole shittiness of it on those tortuous nights out from work, pretending to go to the shit-house but taking a detour out the back door and either (a) text your mates to see if they want to go AWOL from other nightmare nights out or (b) straight home. Fuck semi-concerned TV reporters from Regent St. whining on about retail spending and the fucking sales. Fuck the people who go and sleep outside shops so they can get a cheap sofa in the sale on Boxing Day.

Fuck miserable cunts on two-bob fanzines spreading their misery via the internet when you know a couple of wins around the Christmas and the lightweight cunts are necking anything they can get their short-fingered mitts on and trying to nail the border-line boiler from accounts.

Holden Caulfield